Makerfield MP Josh Simons calls suggestions that he commissioned a probe to discredit journalists "complete nonsense"
A Wigan MP has described suggestions that he commissioned a probe into national journalists to discredit them when head of a Labour thinktank as “nonsense.”
The Guardian newspaper has published an article reporting that, before he entered parliament, the now member for Makerfield Josh Simons ordered and reviewed a report on journalists investigating Labour Together: an organisation he directed at the time and would help propel Keir Starmer into No 10.
In an agreement addressed to Mr Simons, drawn up by the PR firm APCO Worldwide, the firm agreed to “investigate the sourcing, funding and origins” of a November 2023 Sunday Times report about the thinktank, as well as other journalistic investigations into the group.
The agreement said that APCO would “establish who and what are behind the co-ordinated attacks on Labour Together.”
APCO research contained reports on journalists at papers including the Guardian and the Sunday Times who had reported on irregularities in the thinktank’s funding. APCO also sought to identify the journalists’ sources.
But in a statement to Wigan Today, Mr Simons said: “This is complete nonsense.
“In my previous job at a thinktank, we suspected an illegal hack of sensitive materials. We asked a PR company to look into that.
"It was nothing to do with excellent UK journalists at Sunday Times, Guardian or any other British newspaper.
"The work of journalists is vital to our democracy.
"This old story is being dragged up, dramatised, and it has nothing to do with my work in government or serving you as your local MP.”
Former shadow chancellor John McDonnell has called the investigation into journalists “truly shocking” in a letter to Labour Party general secretary Hollie Ridley.
The article has been published during the most difficult week of Sir Keir’s premiership, after he admitted that he knew that Peter Mandelson maintained a friendship with the child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein following his criminal conviction and yet still appointed him Britain’s ambassador to the US.
There have been calls for the PM to sack his chief of staff, Morgan McSweeney, over the matter.
Mr McSweeney had previously run Labour Together and his own role in the operation to gather material on journalists is also in the spotlight.
Mr McDonnell said: “If the reports of activities in surveilling journalists are accurate it is clear that this organisation and its operators and controllers are bringing our party into disrepute.”